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The FReeper Foxhole Revisits Operation Eagle Claw (4/24/1980) - Apr. 24th, 2004
http://www.afa.org/magazine/jan1999/0199desertone_print.html ^
Posted on 04/24/2004 12:00:03 AM PDT by snippy_about_it

Lord,
Keep our Troops forever in Your care
Give them victory over the enemy...
Grant them a safe and swift return...
Bless those who mourn the lost. .
FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time.
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U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues
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The FReeper Foxhole Revisits
Operation Eagle Claw Iranian Hostage Crisis
For some, the current political debate over the combat readiness of today's American military stirs memories of a long-ago event that, more than anything else, came to symbolize the disastrously "hollow" forces of the post-Vietnam era.
It began in the evening of April 24, 1980, when a supposedly elite US military force launched a bold but doomed attempt to rescue their fellow American citizens and their nation's honor from captivity in Tehran. In the early hours of April 25, the effort ended in fiery disaster at a remote spot in Iran known ever after as Desert One.
This failed attempt to rescue 53 hostages from the US Embassy in Tehran resulted in the death of five US Air Force men and three Marines, serious injuries to five other troops, and the loss of eight aircraft. That failure would haunt the US military for years and would torment some of the key participants for the rest of their lives.
One, Air Force Col. James Kyle, called it, "The most colossal episode of hope, despair, and tragedy I had experienced in nearly three decades of military service."
The countdown to this tragedy opened exactly 20 years ago, in January 1979. A popular uprising in Iran forced the sudden abdication and flight into exile of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the longtime ruler of Iran and staunch US ally. Brought to power in the wake of this event was a government led, in name, by Shahpur Bakhtiar and Abolhassan Bani Sadr. Within months, they, too, had been shoved aside, replaced by fundamentalist Shiite Muslim clerics led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
On Nov. 4, two weeks after President Jimmy Carter had allowed the shah to enter the US for medical care, 3,000 Iranian "student" radicals invaded the US Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage. Chief of Mission L. Bruce Laingen and two aides were held separately at the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
The students demanded that the shah be returned for trial. Khomeini's supporters blocked all efforts to free the hostages.
Thirteen black and female hostages would be released later as a "humanitarian" gesture, but the humiliating captivity for the others would drag on for 14 months.
Rice Bowl
Carter, facing a re-election battle in 1980, strongly favored a diplomatic solution, but his national security advisor, Zbignew Brzezinski, directed the Pentagon to begin planning for a rescue mission or retaliatory strikes in case the hostages were harmed. In response, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. David C. Jones, established a small, secretive planning group, dubbed "Rice Bowl," to study American options for a rescue effort.
It quickly became clear how difficult that would be.
The first obstacle was the location. Tehran was isolated, surrounded by more than 700 miles of desert and mountains in any direction. This cut the city off from ready attack by US air or naval forces. Moreover, the embassy was in the heart of the city congested by more than four million people.
A bigger hurdle, however, was the condition of the US military, which had plummeted in size and quality in the seven years since it had staged a near-total withdrawal from Vietnam. Among the casualties of the postVietnam cutbacks was the once-powerful array of Army and Air Force special operations forces that had performed feats of great bravery and military skill in Southeast Asia.
The one exception was an elite unit of soldiers recently formed to counter the danger of international terror. This unit, called Delta Force, was commanded by Army Col. Charles Beckwith, a combat-tested special forces officer. Delta, which had just been certified as operational after conducting a hostage rescue exercise, was directed to start planning for the real thing at the Tehran embassy.
The immediate question was how to get Delta close enough to do its job. Directing the planners who were trying to solve that riddle was Army Maj. Gen. James Vaught, a veteran of three wars, with Ranger and airborne experience but no exposure to special operations or multiservice missions. Because of the need for extreme secrecy, he was denied the use of an existing JCS or service organization. Vaught had to assemble his planning team and the joint task force that would conduct the mission from widely scattered sources.
One of the early selections was Kyle, a highly regarded veteran of air commando operations in Vietnam, who would help plan the air mission and would be on-scene commander at Desert One.
When Beckwith ruled out a parachute drop, helicopters became the best option for reaching Tehran, despite the doubts Beckwith and other Vietnam veterans had about their reliability. Navy RH-53D Sea Stallions, which were used as airborne minesweepers, were chosen because of their superior range and load-carrying capability and their ability to operate from an aircraft carrier.
Even the Navy Sea Stallions could not fly from the Indian Ocean to Tehran without refueling. After testing and rejecting alternatives, the task force opted to use Air Force EC-130 Hercules transports rigged with temporary 18,000-gallon fuel bladders to refuel the helicopters on their way to Tehran.
Finding the Spot
However, that decision led to the requirement of finding a spot in the Iranian desert where the refueling could take place on the ground. That required terrain that would support the weight of the gas-bloated Hercules.
US intelligence found and explored just such a location, about 200 miles southeast of Tehran. In planning and training, this site was known as Desert One.
Because the RH-53s were Navy aircraft, the Pentagon assigned Navy pilots to fly them and added Marine copilots to provide experience with land assault missions.
That combination soon proved unworkable, as many of the Navy's pilots were unable or unwilling to master the unfamiliar and difficult tasks of long-range, low-level flying over land, at night, using primitive night vision goggles.
In December, most of the Navy pilots were replaced by Marines carefully selected for their experience in night and low-level flying. The mission ultimately had 16 pilots: 12 Marine, three Navy, and one Air Force.
Selected to lead the helicopter element was Marine Lt. Col. Edward Seiffert, a veteran H-53 pilot who had flown long-range search-and-rescue missions in Vietnam and had considerable experience flying with night vision goggles.
Beckwith described Seiffert as "a no-nonsense, humorless--some felt rigid--officer who wanted to get on with the job."
Delta and the helicopter crews never developed the coordination and trust that are essential to high-stress, complex combat missions. Possibly, this was caused by the disjointed nature of the task force and its training.
While the helicopter crews worked out of Yuma, Ariz., the members of Delta Force did most of their training in the woods of North Carolina. Other Army personnel were drilling in Europe. The Air Force crews that would take part in the mission trained in Florida or Guam, thousands of miles away in the Pacific.
The entire operation was being directed by a loosely assembled staff in Washington, D.C., which insisted that all the elements had to be further isolated by a tightly controlled flow of information that would protect operational security.
"Ours was a tenuous amalgamation of forces held together by an intense common desire to succeed, but we were slow coming together as a team," Kyle wrote in his account of the mission.
Meanwhile, Beckwith and his staff were desperate for detailed information on the physical layout of the embassy, the numbers and locations of the Iranian guards, and, most important, the location of the hostages.
Six Buildings
Without that data, Delta had to plan to search up to six buildings in the embassy compound where the hostages might be held. That required Beckwith to increase the size of his assault force, which meant more helicopters were needed.
No intelligence was coming out of Iran because Carter had dismantled the CIA's network of spies due to the agency's role in overthrowing governments in Vietnam and Latin America.
It would be months before agents could be inserted into Iran to supply the detailed intelligence Beckwith said was "the difference between failure and success, between humiliation and pride, between losing lives and saving them."
Despite all the obstacles, the task force by mid-March 1980 had developed what they considered a workable plan, and all of the diverse operational elements had become confident of their ability to carry it out.
The plan was staggering in its scope and complexity, bringing together scores of aircraft and thousands of men from all four services and from units scattered from Arizona to Okinawa, Japan.
Be sure to visit Freeper RaceBannon's site to get more info on Operation Eagle Claw and the Iranian Hostage Crisis
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FReeper Foxhole Armed Services Links

 
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TOPICS: VetsCoR
KEYWORDS: deltaforce; desertone; eagleclaw; eveninglight; freeperfoxhole; history; iran; iranianrescue; rangers; samsdayoff; specialoperations; veterans
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To: SAMWolf
I got to guard one at Osan.
61
posted on
04/24/2004 12:10:17 PM PDT
by
Valin
(Hating people is like burning down your house to kill a rat)
To: Professional Engineer
When the SR-71 entered squadron service at Beale AFB in 1966 or '67 (memory fades) they flew them in during broad daylight. In fact, they flew them in during lunch time recess on a cloudy day as I recall, banking in low under the overcast.
Things came to a complete halt on the playground as every kid in the fifth and sixth grades at Sycamore Elementary in Gridley, CA stood staring up at the big black planes. Somebody had seen a model kit and misidentified them as YF-12A's.
We never saw them again after that but we did hear them, taking off at night. The sound was quite distinct even 20 miles from their runway, and very different from the much less impressive high pitched sound of the U-2's that they roosted with at Beale.
I think the SR-71 was the first airplane I ever really loved.
To: Valin
Oh heck!!! I finished off my supper from Red Lobster last night. It was good, better than Corn Flakes. :-)
63
posted on
04/24/2004 1:16:04 PM PDT
by
Soaring Feather
(~The Dragon Flies' Lair~ Poetry and Prose~)
To: bentfeather
I predict big things for this food thing. One thing I discovered, if your hungry...FOOD it works everytime.
64
posted on
04/24/2004 1:44:12 PM PDT
by
Valin
(Hating people is like burning down your house to kill a rat)
To: Valin
...knife and fork a blurLOL! Go get 'em tiger!
65
posted on
04/24/2004 1:52:31 PM PDT
by
snippy_about_it
(Fall in --> The FReeper Foxhole. America's History. America's Soul.)
To: snippy_about_it
Right after I posted Sam showed up with my Starbucks in hand! One of the perks to living in Oregon.
66
posted on
04/24/2004 4:45:47 PM PDT
by
SAMWolf
(Stress is when you wake up screaming & you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet.)
To: Professional Engineer; Iris7
What I find amazing is all the commentators who are having a hard time "understanding" why Pat Tillman felt like he did and why he did what he did. Seems simple enough to me.
67
posted on
04/24/2004 4:51:59 PM PDT
by
SAMWolf
(Stress is when you wake up screaming & you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet.)
To: Professional Engineer
They had one of the engines of the SR-71 out so we could get a look at it. I was trying to figure out how we could mount it in my car. :-)
68
posted on
04/24/2004 4:53:10 PM PDT
by
SAMWolf
(Stress is when you wake up screaming & you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet.)
To: Valin
VICTORY!!!!
69
posted on
04/24/2004 4:53:58 PM PDT
by
SAMWolf
(Stress is when you wake up screaming & you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet.)
To: InABunkerUnderSF
70
posted on
04/24/2004 4:55:25 PM PDT
by
SAMWolf
(Stress is when you wake up screaming & you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet.)
To: Valin
I predict big things for this food thing.Sister Melvina would say it's just a passing fad. She said that about everything from ball point pens to the space program.
71
posted on
04/24/2004 4:56:41 PM PDT
by
SAMWolf
(Stress is when you wake up screaming & you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet.)
To: SAMWolf; Valin; Iris7; snippy_about_it; PhilDragoo; Darksheare; All
Heh heh heh. Swiped from another thread.
To: InABunkerUnderSF
I've never heard one running. I did get to see a TR-1 just before I was discharged. Very cool watching a 600 ft takeoff run, followed by a 70 degree climbout.
To: Professional Engineer
LOL! I love it!! I'm gonna steal it.
74
posted on
04/24/2004 5:54:07 PM PDT
by
SAMWolf
(Stress is when you wake up screaming & you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet.)
To: SAMWolf
They had one of the engines of the SR-71 out so we could get a look at it. I was trying to figure out how we could mount it in my car. :-) That would be most cool! Until then, I'll have to live vicariously. ;-(
click me
To: Professional Engineer
Now, why didn't I think of that? I only considered a jet powered lawn mower.
76
posted on
04/24/2004 5:59:35 PM PDT
by
SAMWolf
(Stress is when you wake up screaming & you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet.)
To: Professional Engineer
Now you can be a war hero too!ROTFLOL. Too funny. I hope this gets popular!
77
posted on
04/24/2004 6:00:30 PM PDT
by
snippy_about_it
(Fall in --> The FReeper Foxhole. America's History. America's Soul.)
To: snippy_about_it; SAMWolf; E.G.C.
"Therefore, we wholeheartedly support the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive strikes on known terrorist states and organizations that are believed to present a clear threat to our freedom or national security. We support our military, our troops and our Commander-in-Chief and we oppose turning control of our government back over to the liberals and socialists who favor appeasement, weakness, and subserviency. We do not believe in surrendering to the terrorists as France, Germany, Russia and Spain have done and as Kerry, Kennedy, Clinton and the Democrats, et al, are proposing." Well, I hafta say, I agree 100% with THE MAN!!
FReegards...MUD
78
posted on
04/24/2004 6:03:07 PM PDT
by
Mudboy Slim
(RE-IMPEACH Osama bil Clinton!!)
To: Mudboy Slim
I can find no argument with that statement.
79
posted on
04/24/2004 6:05:24 PM PDT
by
SAMWolf
(Stress is when you wake up screaming & you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet.)
To: SAMWolf
"Hanoi John!!"
(To be sung to Neil Young's "Farmer John")
Hanoi John, I'm opposed to yer Power!! Ohahhohh...
Ashamed of you...an yer goddamned LIES!! Ohahhohh...
I loathe the way you flop, I loathe Left's sissy-talk!!
I loathe the way RATS wriggle...Left snickers and it mocks!!
Hanoi John...ohahhohh...I think you are a Coward!!
Yeah, yer scum... damn yer VietNam LIES!! Ooahhohh...
(Little guitar jammin')
Ohhahhhhohhhhh!!
Hanoi John, what makes yer heart sooo purple?! Ohahhohh...
Yer "injuries"...were just gutless LIES!!
I loathe the way Left mocks...and all their sissy-talk!!
I want the righteous Truth...RAT-fools, you are losing...LOSING!!
Hanoi John, I'm opposed to yer Power!! Ohahhohh...ohahhohh..
We object...to yer campaign LIES!!.
(More guitar jammin')
Hanoi John...Cowards don't win elections!!
Ohahhohh...ohahhohh...ohahhohh...
(You) don't deserve...yer three Purple Hearts!!
FReegards...MUD
80
posted on
04/24/2004 6:15:15 PM PDT
by
Mudboy Slim
(RE-IMPEACH Osama bil Clinton!!)
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